WS Sandbox

Problem: The Challenge:  implementing an efficient and effective program to provide free support for many working groups with many projects. Long-standing problems such as declining natural resources and deteriorating watersheds, prove how challenging it is to build effective collaboration across governments, civic groups, and business. To address this, new independent programs are being formed to focus collaboration by several agencies on a specific problem.  Suddenly, people in different agencies an...

Action: Move from talk to action, effectively. Design, implement, and deliver a web-based collaboration workspace to help a community of working groups to manage their strategic program and to measure their progress toward mandated goals. The S4S workspace is not a free-form environment; it provides structured collaboration with accountability. This business-like approach supports: designing strategy and process, tracking internal and external projects, coordinating participants, reporting progress, ...

Problem: Small cities and towns across America face many challenges. Towns that are close to significant natural resource amenities face increasing development pressures from urban professionals plying their trades via the Internet and enjoying the great outdoors, and from burgeoning retirement populations seeking the high quality, low stress way of life found in these picturesque and desirable places. Other communities suffer from youth exodus, crumbling infrastructure and antiquated economies, and a...

Action: A community is a special place full of stories of the people who live there. Collectively, these stories are a big part of the community’s character: its heart and soul. In a way, planning is like writing the next chapter in a community’s story. As we enter the 21st century, there are signs that citizens expect to have a greater role in community decisions. In The Next Form of American Democracy, Matt Leighninger wrote, “[C]itizens seem better at governing, and worse at being governed, than e...

Problem: 1. Collaboration Research has shown that what we almost universally do in meetings seems right, but actually doesn't work very well.  To be specific, human nature intervenes.  Namely, we all want to tell our story and tend to repeat pet agendas over and over, making the proceedings inefficient and closing off paths to innovation.   On the other hand, highly productive groups tend to be similar, to have similar characteristics.  As Tolstoy said, "All happy families resemble one another".  Thi...

Action: IdeaTree is a flow chart for ideas, a visual wiki, a concept mapper.  It enables project teams to collaborate and brainstorm far more effectively and efficiently.  It also implements a revenue sharing plan to help organizations which use it to also benefit financially.   Think of back-of-the-napkin brainstorming, shared worldwide. Arrange your ideas on a global tabletop in the form of websites, audio, spreadsheets and visually show how they relate.     IdeaTree sits at the con...

Problem: It took each one of us to create the environmental danger that we are now facing and I believe that it will take the efforts of everyone making lifestyle changes to clean it up. The solution I offer is to sing a fun song and make a pledge to "do one small thing to make a stand and live more lightly upon the land". Everyone can take individual action to help to solve environmental problems and the Live More Lightly workshop encourages them to take the first easy step. Many people feel overwhel...

Action: To increase individual action on personal environmental impact we need to make people aware of what they can do and help them to remember to do it. By doing a Live More Lightly Workshop, communities can support each individual and other communities commitment to do one small lifestyle change. The book and disk package titled, The Live More Lightly Songbook and Workshop Guide, will provide all of the required materials for any group to host a Live More Lightly Workshop. The book will have list...

Problem: In the expansion of infrastructure and development to sustain the coal industry, local interests and concerns with the effects of this expansion tend to be seen as being less important than corporate, state and economic interests. The expansion of the coal industry will have significant environmental, social and economic impacts on these regions, particularly those in which the mining industry is in an exploratory phase and is yet to be developed. Increasingly, however, such expansion occurs ...

Action: The Coal Communities Listening Tour is an engagement and consultation project with members of coal dependant and affected communities to ground future campaigning on coal expansion in a thorough and robust knowledge of the concerns, issues and needs of the these communities.   Above all, this project starts with listening.   A team of researchers and students from Six Degrees, Review Group: Conservation Review

Problem: The Problem Arizona’s juvenile corrections system, behavioral health services, and educational environments are lacking successful programs to meet the needs for at-risk or challenged youth across all ethnic groups. It is likely that this situation can be applied nationally. Patterns of abuse continue to plague our society in growing numbers. Emotionally and physically jailed juveniles are simply not available to learn coping skills that help them survive and thrive as community member...

Action: The Solution The analogy of taking a fish out of a dirty fish tank, cleaning it off, and throwing it back in with expectations of survival and success applies here. We need more than a clean fish tank, we need a new aquarium. Spectrum Academy is that new aquarium, equipped to meet the needs of habilitating at-hope youth with skill and precision for the 21st Century, by harvesting historical values and restoring cultural and traditional foundations. 21st Century youth need 21st Century ...